Power

POWER - why giving it up might just save us. A rich, moving, and necessary treatise from our most accomplished, coherent, and compassionate thinker on sustainable futures.

This is the story of power - humanity's power over nature and the power of some people over others.

How has Homo sapiens become powerful enough to threaten a mass extinction and disrupt the Earth's climate? Why have we developed so many ways of oppressing one another? Can we change our relationship with power to avert ecological catastrophe, reduce social inequality, and stave off collapse? These questions - and their answers - will determine our fate.

Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources - most significantly, fossil fuels. It asks whether we have, at this point, overpowered natural and social systems, and if we have, what we can do about it.

Most crucially, the book explores how self-limitation of power is rooted in evolution and human history and why, at this vital moment, we must rapidly relearn the lessons of power if humanity is to have a thriving future. Power reminds us that Richard Heinberg is one of the most important public intellectuals in the conversation about society's future.

Richard Heinberg is the author of thirteen previous books, including The Party's Over, Powerdown, Peak Everything, and The End of Growth. He is Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world's most effective communi- cators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. He lives in Santa Rosa, CA.